He clapped his hands? Once, in a back-to-business fashion, or several times, like a small child in glee?

Word is that Romney is immensely cheered by the Ryan partnership: at last, someone to take the heat much more better than I do! Romney seems to really like delegating. It would be fascinating if the stakes weren't so high.

I was all set to urge preservation of the Eeyore perspective, to insist upon the intrinsic value of the Eeyore perspective. Then I remembered I killed a man in Reno just because he had an Eeyore perspective.

Here's the thing. Here's what I think: I think they know they're going to lose this one. I think they're setting the stage, setting the terms of the national debate, for 2016. It's the same long(er) game that they've played for 3 decades now, which has worked tremendously well with the American public.

So you hear, casually, on the television that "everyone knows" and "no-one denies" that our entitlement programs are unsustainable. Everyone knows our extreme (federal) government spending is bankrupting us. Etc.

That's Ryan's schtick: he and others like him need that message to take firm root in the public imagination. Then their policy proposals won't seem so freaky after all. In 2016.

We may be okay for Obama's reelection, but the Republican economic message must still be fought tooth and nail.

14: But pushing the Ryan plan to the forefront of the campaign and then losing sets the moderates up to say, "See. We told you so. The party needs to move to the center." It seems like the smarter play if you want to push the party to the right is a Romney/Portman losing ticket leading to a backlash against moderation* and experience.

* Moderation vis a vis the Tea Party being hardcore right-wing but not entirely delusional.

Given how these lifestyle "gaffes" have been more frequently deployed against Dems (although there was Bush I and the checkout scanner), I'm not very ready to jump on this one. Although I'm sure Romney knows the owners of some yogurt manufacturers.

It is interesting how long yogurt has lasted as a target for that kind of mockery. I first saw it used as a prop in that way in the film version of A Thousand Clowns (1965) when one of the obnoxious agents/producers was eating it (Dannon).

14 I think they know they're going to lose this one. I think they're setting the stage, setting the terms of the national debate, for 2016. It's the same long(er) game that they've played for 3 decades now, which has worked tremendously well with the American public.

17: The moderates of the Republican party? I'm not sure who they are: there are moderate Republican office-holders, who seem mostly invisible. There are "moderate" as in establishment office-holders -- I think that's who you mean by "moderates". There are, though, moderate Republican thinkers (David Frum).

The party is obviously undergoing a horrible battle within itself. The true moderates (David Frum) say: stop being so stupid about the general welfare! The rest seem intent on the task of dismantling the welfare state going back 50 years. Those are the neocons. The party seems to be still in thrall to them.

I with them luck, in a way, in finding a way past their neocons. It almost looks like they need help.

They're not going to move to the center until they're beaten good and sound, to the ground.

I suspect the travelling press is thoroughly used to sad meals consisting of dry turkey sandwiches and yogurt cups. You take what you can get on the campaign trail and it's not going to be a thick T-bone steak and a mug of frosty beer.

28: See 14. Oh, but that's what you're asking. Grover Norquist. Those who want to dismantle the welfare state, and the federal government (strangle it in the bathtub). The champions of privatization, free enterprise, libertarians. "Free market" (which is not really, since it's gov't subsidized) capitalism. Those who want to take all the goods/money for themselves.

When watching his awkwardness, you have to remember it's the product of a reptile trying to mimic the noises a human would be making. By yogurt, he was probably trying come up with a substitute for "bowl of hamsters".

1. Romney will not put the Ryan plan at the center of this campaign. Obama will try to, and Romney will run away from it.
2. Romney is at the top of the ticket. Nobody blames the VP candidate for a loss.
3. The VP slot, even in a losing campaign, doesn't do anything to discredit a politician, unless the politician actively screws up. John Edwards ran a perfectly credible campaign in '08, as did Bob Dole in '96 and Mondale in '84. Lieberman's loss didn't discredit Lieberman personally, nor did it discredit his tendency in the Democratic Party.
4. And, of course, there's Palin. Would anybody have been talking about Palin as a possible presidential candidate in this election had she not been on the '08 ticket? If Palin had wanted to become president, and if she'd had any knack for national campaigning at all, and had she chosen to run, she'd have been formidable in this year's primaries. Her disastrous VP campaign did nothing but boost her standing in the party.

Dan Quayle wasn't discredited in the losing campaign of '92. He was discredited in the victorious campaign of '88.

Who am I forgetting? Muskie? Supports my argument. Eagleton/Shriver? An obviously special case. Ferraro? Bentsen? Kemp? I guess it's true that they didn't get a political boost from the VP race, but was it bad for their careers, or for the credibility of their ideological commitments? I don't think so.

Further to 29, it occurs to me that people may not know of Norquist's address to the CPAC convention a few months ago. TPM excerpted it again recently.

"We are not auditioning for fearless leader," Grover Norquist told conservatives at the CPAC convention in February. "We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate."

Norquist went on: "Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared."

That's what I'm going on in my thinking about these things. Maybe Norquist and those who likewise want to control the presidency aren't actually as powerful as I think.

The only optimistic case I can make about Ryan begins with a calamity: Romney's election. In that event, Romney won't have Ryan hectoring him from the Right - indeed he'll have Ryan covering for him. It could possibly give Romney a little more freedom to act in the interest of the country, if he's got any inclination to do that.

"They believe in small government... until it comes time to control women's bodies!" Zing! I'm really tired of the liberal habit of pointing out these kinds of superficial contradictions. It's true that conservative ideology doesn't make sense if we look at its stated rationales, which are different for different topics. The stated rationales, in fact, function as a kind of weapon against liberals, who jump at the chance to engage and disprove -- and will happily waste infinite amounts of time doing so. It's like a drug for a certain type of "reasonable liberal": they're showing their broad-mindedness by engaging in dialogue with their ideological enemies, and they're showing their intellectual superiority!

"What if, instead, we looked at stated conservative ideology as a part of a more or less consistent strategy?"

You know, you can't call them "stupid" and "disingenuous" at the same time...if they are lying, they have their reasons and a plan.

Anyway, Kotsko is on the right track. "Stupid" and "mistaken", as I have said a million times, is something we should never say about our enemies. It is insular and provincial, based on the Enlightenment idea that people can be educated out of their core values.

... The rest seem intent on the task of dismantling the welfare state going back 50 years. Those are the neocons ...

Neoconservatism is generally identified with aggressive views regarding foreign policy, particularly support for Israel. These may be combined with relatively moderate or liberal views on domestic policy. According to wikipedia :

While neoconservatism is primarily concerned with foreign policy, there is also some discussion of internal economic policies. Neoconservatism is generally supportive of free markets and capitalism, favoring supply side approaches, but it shows several points of disagreement with classical liberalism and fiscal conservatism: Irving Kristol states that neocons are more relaxed about budget deficits and tend to reject the Hayekian notion that the growth of government influence on society and public welfare is "the road to serfdom".[73] Indeed, to safeguard democracy, government intervention and budget deficits may sometimes be necessary, Kristol argues.

This is not the view of the tea party faction within the Republican party and it is incorrect to refer to this faction as the neocons.

The WP has a little slide show of 5 Things You Didn't Know about Paul Ryan that is clearly meant to be humiliating. He drove the Wienermobile in high school. He used to be a personal trainer and everyone calls him a "gym rat" (photo of women warming up for yoga). Doofy photo of Ryan from awkward angle giving what appear to be ironic thumbs up.

The evidence is pretty thick that someone in the Romney camp pissed off the Post.

Or that his handlers think chief vulnerability is being seen as an unempathetic robot, and they want to humanize him.

The 'media' is much more diverse than it was in 2000, and needs much more fuel to keep running every day. I doubt that an effort to Gore the President would be successful. But worth trying, if you're Romney. Especially compared to the alternatives: Rubio would turn off the racists, and Portman (I thought it would be him) or Pawlenty wouldn't even come close to capturing the Village the way Ryan does.

I don't think there's a 'they' that is trying to moderate the Republican party. There are a couple of different 'theys' trying to radicalize it, and no sign that defeat would trouble them (as it certainly did not in 2006 or 2008). Defeat just proves they weren't radical enough.

I'm where I was 6 months ago: Obama can definitely lose this thing, and people shouldn't think he can't.

32: I didn't say a loss would completely discredit Ryan or keep him from running again. I just said it would tend to weaken, rather than strengthen, him and his party faction (contra parsimon, whose argument I'm still not following).

McCain ran away from his centrist record, then picked an inexperienced, far-right running mate and lost badly. Now Romney is running away from his centrist record and picking an inexperienced, far-right running mate. If he loses, the conclusion is... run farther right? I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying it's not logical.

I have seen, among thousands, two explanations for the Ryan choice. The idiocy is that Romney doesn't want to get blamed for the loss. Romney has no political ambitions after a loss, Romney will be totally over.

The much better one is that even though they can't win with Ryan, Ryan will bring tons and fucking oodles of cash into House and Senate campaigns

This one I like. Repubs aren't as obsessed with the WH and OMIGOD SCOTUS as Democrats, and keeping of improving their position in Congress will allow them to either obstruct and stall, or ensure that what is signed by Obummer will strongly move the country to the right. I mean, Obama will sign bills, right? The country must be run, so dammit, sorrow more than anger, Obama will compromise.

Republicans see the priority of agenda, and elections as a just means to move the discourse and the country. Win or lose, they always manage, with Democrats helping them out by fighting for ever drifting center.

50: If all you're saying is that you'd rather Ryan lose than win, then okay, I get that. I thought you were suggesting in 17 that putting Ryan on the ticket, followed by his defeat, would weaken Ryan and/or his faction, compared to not having Ryan on the ticket at all.

I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying it's not logical.

And I was saying only that it will happen, but now I'll go a step further and say that it's logical.

Many rightwingers will cite Romney's refusal to run on the Ryan budget as the cause of his failure, but yes, that will be silly. Illogical.

bob gets at the real logic in 41: When you lose, you dust yourself off and try again, and you use whatever works. Absent some personal flameout or currently unknown flaw, in four years Ryan will be well-positioned as the spokesman for teh crazy, and thus for the Republican Party.

The evidence is pretty thick that someone in the Romney camp pissed off the Post.V

I'm glad SOME newspaper is capable of that sort of thing. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's big Sunday headline is "ROMNEY TAPS ANTI-DEFICIT VOICE FOR VP", with subhead "Optimistic fiscal guru anxious to debate over policy". Remember, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is the right-wing paper.

54: A lot depends on whether Romney embraces Ryan's budget or tries to finesse it. I haven't really been paying attention to the coverage this weekend to see how they're playing it. But its hard to believe Romney thinks he can get away with the latter --- it would piss off the base and reinforce his weaselly image.

56: Initial indications were that they were going to try to finesse it. Not sure if the Sixty Minutes interview got into it or not, however. From the campaign's talking points on Saturday:

Does this mean Mitt Romney is adopting the Paul Ryan plan? • Gov. Romney applauds Paul Ryan for going in the right direction with his budget, and as president he will be putting together his own plan for cutting the deficit and putting the budget on a path to balance. • Romney's administration will go through the budget line by line and ask two questions: Can we afford it? And, if not, should we borrow money from China to pay for it? • Mitt Romney will start with the easiest cut of all: Obamacare, a trillion-dollar entitlement we don't want and can't afford.

The narrative on Ryan-Romney is already written. Ryan gets the credit if they win, Romney the blame if they lose. Weisberg channels The Village here.

Ryan is, I kid you not, a "principled, conservative idea man." Once so annointed, it's unclear what you have to do to be discredited. Gringrich said a bunch of crazy things and resigned from the House in disgrace and he's still a Republican intellectual.

Weisberg here is voicing the conventional wisdom about Ryan's selection:

It forces the debate the country needs to have about entitlement spending and ensures that the remaining months will be more than an argument about whose negative ads are more disgusting.

What horseshit! Ryan has taken a bold stand in favor of cutting the entitlements of the undeserving - not your entitlements. His Medicare plan will improve the provision of healthcare. And to the extent that those lines won't sell, Mitt and Ryan will abandon Ryan's plan, and Mitt will take the blame not only from the Tea Party, but from nitwits like Weisberg - which is to say, from the people who run the national media.

||Ugh. What to do when someone you love is a terrific person when properly medicated, but currently non-compliant w/the meds? What if the non-compliance is due, in part, to loss of employment/health insurance and the resulting inability to afford said meds? What if, further, being non-compliant substantially impairs the likelihood of securing health-insurance-providing employment going forward? Best answer I can come up with is despairing sadness at the vicious cycle. Will Obamacare fix this? |>

If Romney loses, I think both sides will have ammunition--moderates will blame Ryan being too extreme, and the right will blame Romney for being too moderate. Everybody Wins! (read: loses). The spin war between the factions to claim the narrative high ground will be fierce.

Out here the criteria for me to be able to have my boot stamp on the human face forever someone involuntarily committed for a psych eval is "a substantial and immediate danger to self or others." Outside of that, your local NAMI might be able to point you toward some resources.

In fact I just did an involuntary committment a few hours ago. Hearing voices, making up assaults by family members, disciplining an 18 month old by tying her up with a pair of her own pajama bottoms, etc. means it's time for a trip up to the university hospital for a chat with a doctor while "dad" comes to take possession of the infant and the 18 month old. He might be a felon but he's got all the little extras you look for in a dad like current access to housing, a car with a carseat, and a belief that children should not be tied up with their pajamas. Another heartwarming night on the beat.

If 1-2 is "kind of a downer to be around" and 9-10 is "involuntary commitment, I think we're talking in the 3 - 6 range (it's sort of episodic). He's still taking meds - just taking lower and lower doses to (a) stretch what he has left and (b) avoid an abrupt cut off when they run out. Not an irrational strategy. But surely there has to be a way short of commitment for someone uninsured and without savings to stay medicated. I'll check out NAMI -- thanks GS.

... But surely there has to be a way short of commitment for someone uninsured and without savings to stay medicated. ...

Has this been discussed with his doctor? There are sometimes reasonable alternatives if the doctor knows cost is an issue. I also believe drug companies sometimes have programs to assist people in this position. After all the drug company also wants the person to be able to resume paying for his medication.

Thinly Veiled, James is right about there being programs to help pay for this stuff run by drug companies. Feel free to e-mail me. He just needs to submit some income statements. Unemployment counts. For some of them, you need a professional advocate. In MA that person could be an employee of a hospital, but a community health center is bound to have somebody.

They'll mail you a 3 month supply for a year. Sometimes, they'll let you fill the first prescription at a local pharmacy. Good luck.

RxAssist has links to all of the different programs with information on how to apply.

I'm way late in getting back to this, and the thread has clearly moved on. If this argument is over whether Romney or Ryan will receive blame for a loss in 2012, it'll be Romney, in my view. The problem was -- so the story will go -- that they nominated a moderate. The narrative along those lines has been pretty fully spelled out.

Just look at where the money's coming from for the Romney ticket: these people aren't fooling around. They can wait until 2016, when the national dialogue has been shifted more successfully.

That is, I believe they fully intend to hamstring/strangle the federal government for 2012-2015, just as they have done for Obama's first term, until the American people have lost all hope of the federal government working at all in in its current form.

Well, I believe they fully intend to hamstring/strangle the federal government until complete social collapse renders anyone incapable of achieving anything. And since I'm a boy, I can say that and no one will call me shrill.

They'll also continue to chip away at the margins at the state level, through voter suppression laws, union busting, and the various other things that ALEC has sponsored. The goal would be to foster an every-man-for-himself feeling among the electorate*, so that, as Paul Ryan himself says, we just can't take care of everyone, for heaven's sake! We have an emergency on our hands; gotta throw some (more) people under the bus.

* Not that there's an actual conspiracy. Just a sort of like-mindedness, you might say.

Sometimes I think Biden is a genius VP pick. He's no one terribly important that is being taken off of active duty (like Hillary would have been), and he's not some radical nutjob who is going to make Obama seem like he's secretly in outer space. Biden doesn't make Obama look shabby, or old, or weak, or dumb. Ryan kind of does all of those things.

(Of course it behooves one to respect conservative tactical skill. If it's anything, the modern conservative movement is basically a set of well-honed political tactics bereft of any worthwhile objective to advance.)

91: Some of them do seem truly to believe what they say, though. I assume this is because they're coddled (privileged). Paul Ryan, for example, seems to believe himself -- which is just so odd. He seems quite young as a result.

You think? Odd, Ryan doesn't strike me as believing what he says at all. He looks to me like someone who's been cast and dressed up for the role of The Guy With Big Ideas, except his script-writers don't actually have any ideas.

Mm, yeah, that's what I thought before, that he was dressed up, but I've begun to wonder in the last couple of days in light of various speeches/talks he's given (that I hadn't known anything about before) whether he doesn't actually believe it. I think he may.

I should look up references for what I mean. Um, there was something on NPR this evening about his views on the Federal Reserve; he sounds like a junior wonk who's not spinning yarns but actually believes himself. I'll see (a bit later, I'm having a late dinner) whether I can come up with other references that have surprised me recently.

97: Oh, well Christ, I don't know what the hell is going on there. He says that it will cut the deficit by 2040 -- it's not like he's making a grand promise, for instant deficit reduction.

He believes that the money-holders and -lenders really are the (sole) job creators. How's that? He believes that they must be rid of their tax and regulatory burdens. He doesn't think they'll hoard -- which is of course what they are doing now, but never mind that, it's only because of their current burdens.

As a slight sidebar, his alleged Catholic morality is at issue in this. I wouldn't mind seeing the Catholics interrogate him over throwing people under the bus.

One of the charming things about the Lizza profile was Ryan's evident butthurt when Obama used his precious ideas as millstones to hang on the GOP. You can almost hear him crying, "But... my ideas! How can you mock my beautiful ideas!"

101: Agreed. The way the account lingers on Ryan being invited to sit in the front row at Obama's talk about his precious budget, at which he gets totally reamed, is sad. But the biggest brown-noser in school wrote the best paper, and intends on living on it forever! How could you say it's not perfect?

I sat on a thesis committee for a student like Ryan in this way. He--and frankly, the rest of the committee--couldn't be convinced there was a single flaw with a word he'd written, even though the entire thing was thoroughly incompetent. He hadn't read a word on the topic, and when I suggested texts to him that could be helpful a month in advance, he inserted footnotes about them that only showed he hadn't read them. He kept talking about what an obsessive labor of love this had been for him, and how joyous he was to finally share it with the world. He invited several friends to the defense to watch us congratulate him. He's a nicely-dressed young person who pats professors condescendingly on the shoulder and stares them in the eye to thank them for their time, so everyone is sure his work is flawless. That's Ryan.

Also worth noting that it's characteristic of Randians, specifically (not exclusively, to be sure) to be far more interested in the notion of themselves as Very Smart People than in any form of the actual intellectual work associated with developing worthwhile ideas. Rand's own Objectivist circle was terribly taken with the idea that it represented something intellectually revolutionary, unlike all those allegedly degenerate second-handers who actually read something other than Rand. It was completely unsurprising to learn that Ryan is a Randian.

Sounds plausible. Right-wing discourse has been dressing up as plainspoken, rational, undeniable truth for millennia now. "Common sense" is both self-evident and tending to preserve existing hierarchies.